Greedy Goodell and the Folly of the Replacement Referees

I’ll get to the Monday Night debacle from last night in a
moment, but I’d like to connect it with what I experienced on Sunday live at a
game and at home watching one first.

If you’ve read this blog before, then it should come as
no surprise to you that I’m a fan of the New Orleans Saints.

I’ve been a season ticket holder since 2006 (technically
2005), and I’ve actually been frequenting the Superdome since 2001.

In that time, I’ve come away from some games grossly disappointed
with my team.Those of you who remember
the Brooks-Haslett era and before that time know, especially, what I’m talking
about.

This past Sunday, September 23rd, 2012, is a day
that I’ll now always remember as having been the first time that I left the
Superdome feeling as though I wasted my money.

While the team’s performance was atrocious, I would never
call watching my team in any capacity a waste of money.Fans generally have an idea of what they’re going to watch when they buy
a ticket to see their team.If your team
sucks, there’s a good chance that you’re not going to witness the most
stellar collection of performers.Usually, when this
happens, ticket sales decrease, and the organization will feel pressured to
improve the product it’s presenting to its customers.

If they could get away with it, owners would never spend
grand sums of money on coaches, GMs, scouts, players, etc.Why would they need to?If people sat back and accepted a poor
product as valid and continued showing their support for it with their wallets,
it would be impractical from a business perspective to waste money on improving
the product.

But we don’t allow that collectively, do we?

The Saints, pre-Brees/Payton, never even whiffed a season
ticket sell-out.Instantly, when the
product improved, everyone wanted to be a part of the magic.Everyone wanted
to pay for a great product.

Many, including myself, often consider those who choose to
boycott their team’s poor performance to be “fair-weather fans.”We are there through thick and thin.

We are the true, loyal
fans.

We don't dig any loyalties with the NFL. It's specifically a bond between us and our respective teams.

Saints’ fans, particularly more than fans of other teams this year,
will be an interesting group to observe in 2012 because, if the team continues
to perform as poorly as they have through the first three weeks of the season,
they’ll likely begin to let Benson know about how they feel with their wallets.

The distinction between the Saints and, say, a team like the Raiders is that
the Saints' poor performance is not solely due to the organization itself. Sure, the personnel and coaching looks sloppy at times, but let's not forget the true catalyst for the product that Saints fans are seeing in 2012.

At the Superdome this weekend, I had the displeasure of
watching what happens when you put professional players in an unprofessional
atmosphere.

While all NFL fans should be outraged by what we’ve seen
from the NFL thus far, Saints fans should be particularly upset.Here are some brief chronicles in the life of
this fan at the Superdome on Sunday in Goodell’s NWO NFL.

- Texted two friends around 1:30 PM about whether or not Pierre
Thomas’ TD, which was being reviewed, would hold up.They weren’t showing any replay of it in the
Superdome.Normally, this only happens
if a replay could be beneficial to the other team, but in this case, it’s
common courtesy to the fans there to let them try to figure out what they think
of the play.Conveniently, the refs overturned the call.One of my buddies asked me why the crowd
didn’t give a more violent reaction. I didn’t understand why he was asking me
that because I gave the benefit of the doubt to the officials.Another one of my friends, fellow Spin IT
contributor Jonathan “Chin” Palazzolo, sent me the following:

“All video evidence at home shows
him having his hand under the ball.The
announcers said there was nowhere near enough evidence to overturn it.I agree…Man, f*** these officials.”

It was at this moment that I began to have a conspiracy vibe. The Saints wound up missing the ensuing field goal and went into the
half up 4 instead of 11.

- Over the course of the second half, as the Saints started
to fall apart, there began to be more scrutiny on the referees.Missed holds.Bad interference calls.Fans
started growing restless.Everyone in my
section, and through the stadium from what I heard afterwards, started playing
referee.Even when they made the right
calls, I found myself compelled to question it if it was too far away for me to make a judgment call on it myself.I trusted friends watching on their televisions more than the referees
at what was supposed to be a professional football game.

This is the
fundamental flaw underlying the entire situation with the replacement
officials.Even the best of the regular officials were
prone to human error, but the fact that the current replacements are literally expected to
be purely erroneous all of the time is a problem.Even if the referees get everything right
next week, the trust will not be there, and because some of these calls can
sometimes be in the grey, there will be violent reactions to calls and an
eventual feeling of apathy amongst fans.That apathy will stem from the fact that this season, in many ways, could
be argued as null and void if the refs don’t return in time.

- As the Chiefs came back, it was clearly the time when
a team looks to its coach for a sense of calm level-headedness.They look for the man who is in control, and
that was not Aaron Kromer.That’s
because he is a replacement as well.Actually, he is a replacement’s replacement.His playcalling towards the end of the game
was lackluster, and the offense looked lackadaisical with dropped balls and
missed blocking assignments.

The lesser product being given to customers of the NFL in
New Orleans can almost be solely blamed on Roger Goodell.The loss of Sean Payton is a big reason for
the offensive struggles, but that’s no secret.

The best kept secret is this:Goodell also sabotaged the Saints
defense.We lost two draft picks along
with the suspensions.Right now, if this
defense had one CB better than Pat Robinson (which certainly could have been found anywhere in the first two rounds of this year's draft) and another player as talented as
Cam Jordan somewhere on our front four, there’s no way the team would be 0-3.

- I think it's also worth noting, for those of you who didn't attend an NFL home game over the weekend, that the Pierre Thomas incident wasn't the only form of referee propaganda blatantly employed during the game. There were other instances in which they wouldn't show us a replay of a call that was under review until maybe a minute before the refs stopped reviewing it. My guess is that the stadium itself, with Tom Benson siding with against the official officials in the lockout, waited to make sure that the refs were completely comfortable with the call they were going to make. The "tough calls" from the second quarter and beyond were never replayed.

Meanwhile, the overhead screen did a great job of replaying all of the obvious false starts that the refs were getting right while even zooming in on the specific player who obviously jumped first. Thanks for that!

After the loss, I came home in time to watch the Night Game
between the Ravens and the Pats and witnessed another lifetime's worth of bad calls and
missed calls.Somehow, though, the referees had
topped their own extremely low standards by cowardly running off the field while
ignoring Coach Bill Belichick.Out of
frustration, Belichick grabbed one of them and practically demanded a review of
the kick that had just sent the Pats to a 1-2 record.

Until the final play of the game, the MNF game presented nothing
new.Bad calls.Missed calls.We’ve been over this.

But then, something different did happen.The officials tangibly controlled the fate of
the game.

And now, the referee issue has come to its inevitable climax.

Let’s go under the hypothetical that Golden Tate’s brutal offensive pass interference didn’t happen.So, we’re pretending that the only thing to focus on was the jump ball.

Packers Fan (left) and Seahawks Fan (right) at an impasse.

First of all, I think the jump ball should have been called as an interception in favor of Green Bay.However, despite what most other media outlets will have you believe, the NFL and Pete Carrol do make
compelling cases using the rulebook as guidelines for their opinions on why it was a catch. This would have been a controversial call with official officials.The difference is that the trust would still
be there for those officials.People
would be talking about it, but at least you wouldn’t have had one moron who was
signaling touchdown as the other moron signaled otherwise.

Also, to the contrarians whom I've seen lurking in forums today, you’re foolish if you’re simply chalking this up to “media hype.”This is a quintessential example of an
evil conglomerate once again finding a way to ruin something that good,
hard-working people have loved since their childhood.

But why? Why do Goodell and friends continue to lock out their
referees? Well, I’ll let Peter King of SI.com explain
that one:

“Over the last five years, the
league has contributed, on average, about $5.3 million per year to the
officials' pension plan. The league, in keeping with the current cost-cutting
practice of corporations across America, no longer wants to guarantee how much
each official would get in retirement, but rather tie the contributions to a
401(k)-type pension. That would save the league about $3.3 million per year.

Many would say that giving
part-time officials a pension contribution of $12,500 per year is sufficient.
But the locked-out officials look at it this way: The league is more prosperous
than it ever has been and more profitable than it ever has been. What is the
justification for cutting pensions by 60 percent in a booming football economy?”

That’s right, the billion-dollar industry that is the NFL is
allowing all of this commotion to save $3.3 million a year.In NFL terms, that’s the kind of money that
individual players argue over with individual teams.

I haven’t been fazed or outraged by any of this
stuff since Week 1, though.I’m on the verge of
not even going to Saints games this year, especially if I can sell my ticket
at a high price to some sap that wants to pay big money for an unprofessional game.I’ll still be watching the games on tv,
but why should I let Goodell and his owner-thugs rip me off?

Roger Goodell, as I’ve said before,
does not care about player safety.He
does not care about “the shield.”And as
long as you continue to watch the games on tv or, especially, at the stadiums
of the teams which you lovingly support, he doesn’t care about you. The only thing he cares about is money.

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There are already rumors going around the Internet that
Packers fans at Lambeau will leave the stadium at halftime of this Sunday's game against the Saints in support of the
official officials.

That's a great gesture, but these fans need to keep in mind that they would only be doing a disservice to themselves in giving away their hard earned money for only one half of football.

I am not calling for a boycott. I don't have the influence to do something like that, but plenty of others with the influence are already doing so. In regards to the boycotts, though, if you are going to take a real stand against a very greedy group of men, there's only one way to properly do so. The protests can't just be allegorical; they have to be expressed tangibly. They have to be with your wallets.